Govt needs to hike defence spending: Tewari

Congress MP Manish Tewari Wednesday raised in the Lok Sabha the issue of falling defence allocation in the Union Budget and pointed out that China's defence spending has been growing.

He expressed the hope that the government would address the issue and the concern would be taken care of in the upcoming Budget.

"China is spending more on defence. Their defence spending has grown over the years," Tewari said in the Lok Sabha during the Zero Hour.

Citing a Parliamentary panel report, he said, the country's defence expenditure was reduced to 1.60 per cent of the GDP in 2017-18.

It further came down to 1.52 per cent in the interim Budget for 2019-20.

Raising the issue of death of construction workers in Pune and Mumbai, Girish Bapat (BJP) said there is an urgent need to implement Development Control (DC) Rules so that they are brought under the safety net.

Last week, 40 construction workers died in Pune and 20 in Mumbai.

Since construction workers are part of the unorganised sector, they don't come under the safety net, he added.

C P Joshi (BJP) said the Rajasthan government has failed to implement farm debt waiver as promised, forcing farmers to commit suicide.

The Congress had promised to implement farm debt waiver in 10 days of coming to power but they have failed to do so, he said.

Gaurav Gogoi (Cong) raised the issue of financial distress of PSUs in the country.

The House has discussed the poor financial health of state-owned BSNL and MTNL, he said, adding, India Post too is under stress.

India Post has made a loss of Rs 15,000 crore, he said, urging the government to devise a plan and mechanism to revive such PSUs and make them financially viable.

P P Chaudhary (BJP) said the government should devise a mechanism to follow World Health Organisation (WHO) standard for calculating blood sugar level.

Citing a report, Chaudhary said recently at a global conference it was decided to fix normal range of blood sugar level to 100 from the 120 currently.

Hansraj Hans (BJP) raised the issue of drug abuse and death of sanitation workers in many part of the country.

A renowned Sufi singer, Hans enthralled the House with his couplets.